 The Liberian State of Emergency: What Do Civil War and State-Led Industrialization Have in Common?Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, 2009, vol. 14, issue 3, 28 Abstract: What befalls the economy in countries that descend into violence? Using the case of Liberia, I argue that the effects of civil war on the private sector, while overwhelmingly disastrous, can, especially for infant firms that manage to survive, convey many of the benefits (and liabilities) that ISI and SLI policies have had elsewhere. Specifically, the war economy in Liberia mimicked import tariffs, localized the staffs of many companies, raised local content in products, and even spurred technical learning and knowledge accumulation. The intention in calling attention to ways in which the status quo of crisis benefited some companies is not to downplay the horror of the war years, nor to suggest that the war was in any way desirable. Rather, this paper aims (1) to dispel the discredited but persistent misimpression of the post-conflict economy as virtual tabula rasa, and (2) to emphasize the importance of protecting local industries in post-conflict economies. Keywords: economies in conflict; production firms; import-substitution industrialization; stateled industrialization; post-conflict recovery (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:pepspp:v:14:y:2009:i:3:n:2 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy is currently edited by Raul Caruso More articles in Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy from De Gruyter |
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